Autumn's Breath
by Morna
Summary: Zelda's time in Hyrule is over. Now, it is time for her to return to where she belongs. A Zelgan take on the Hades and Persephone myth.


Autumn's Breath

Zelda's breath rattles in her lungs, blood flecking her lips as she takes another shallow breath. The physicians ringing her bedside, murmur to themselves, take her pulse, and shake their heads.

"I am so sorry," one says.

"There is nothing more we can do for her," another states.

"Just try to make her comfortable," a third suggests.

Despite their uselessness, they remain in the smothering room with the fawning noblemen and distant cousins who still hope to somehow be named heir to the throne.

A serving girl comes and dabs her head lightly with a wet rag, offers her a sip of water. The dying queen takes the water and falls back heavily on the bed. One of the doctors wants to leech her to perhaps rid her of ill humors and prolong her life. With a thin skeletal hand, she waves off the suggestion irritably. She does not want to linger here. She has fulfilled her part, played her role in this Cycle. It is time to move on and go home, to return to the place where she belongs.

The journey always seems to take longer than it truly does. It feels as if she has been wandering for years through this desolate place, nothing but rolling hills of tall gray grass, a poor mimicry of Hyrule Field. Where she steps though, color blooms. The grass turns golden and brown and rustles when the wind passes through it. The leaves on the trees turn to red and orange and fall lazily in zig-zag patterns with the stirring of a breeze. The effects spread until she leaves a wake of fall behind her like a bridal train. The air grows crisp and fresh and cool.

His palace sits on a high hill, a spear of black piercing a snow bleached sky. Her boots crunch in frost and snow and dead twigs as she begins her ascent, wrapping her cloak tightly around herself. The wind here howls, unforgiving and cruel. It is the worst at the bottom but eases the higher she climbs. The trees here, gnarled and twisted, suffer the same fate as the grass in the field. Their branches bud with leaves like fire and gold, and the snow gives way to a bed of underbrush and mushrooms. The wind ceases its shrieking and contents itself to run its fingers through her hair and her skirts.

The towering doors open for her with a light touch of her hand, silently swinging inwards. The hall is cold and austere, columns like bones carved from living rock. The very end of the room is so far from her it is shrouded in shadows with eyes that flicker like coals. She can make out a dim shape hunkered down and walks towards it. Her steps, which should ring out in the gloom, are muffled and silent. The frost licking the walls is reluctant to give way to her influence, but it soon succumbs under a wave of russet colored creeping vines and goldenrods.

The shape shifts as she draws nearer. She can see the outline of a man by the time she is halfway across the hall. He is perched on the edge of his throne, poised like a hawk about to take wing. Consciously, she squares her shoulders, straightens her back, and tilts her chin up every so slightly. The entrance of autumn must be elegant and regal. It must be quiet and refined. Leave the riotous noise and exuberance for the spring.

She is three quarters of the way down the hall when the man stands from his throne. He is still for only a moment before he rushes down the steps and runs across the space between them, his boots thumping heavily on the floor. He barrels into her like a mid-winter's storm, crushing and abrasive. Her lungs creak and crack from the vice like strength of his arms around her rib cage and the sharp chill in the air. One shoe slips off and clacks to the floor as her feet dangle in the air.

Her rigid posture evaporates as she melts bonelessly into him. Resting her cheek on his shoulder, she buries her face in the long red hair and smells frost and brimstone. The black silk of his robe is cold and smooth beneath her cheek. They stand there like that for several heartbeats. The air is tense and full with the threatening promise of snow and night and darkness, of the last rays of golden sun disappearing over dark hills. That fretful moment when the world lets go of the last bit of warmth and gives itself over fully to winter's grip.

At last, he releases her, and she drops back onto the soles of her feet. She draws in a deep breath and looks down at the floor as her cheeks flush from more than the cold. Her fingers pick at the folds of her dress, trying to straighten the skewed skirts, and she slips her fallen shoe back on. She had forgotten how bold he was sometimes.

"It has been a long time," he says and grips her hands in his.

"Not so very long," she replies and looks up at him.

"It seems like a long time down here when you are gone, but now you are back." He lifts her hands to his mouth and kisses her knuckles, teeth lightly scraping the skin.

"Yes, I am," she says with a small smile. She does not say the rest of it. There is no need. They both know that her stay here will not be permanent because it never is.

"How long do you think you will stay this time?" he asks as he lowers their hands and tucks her right one into the crook of his elbow.

Together, they begin to slowly walk, and the cold gripping the place relaxes just a little. There is a splash of orange in the corner where a pumpkin is growing from a vine, and another of yellow where a squash is nestled into a corner. If Ganondorf notices it or cares, he does not say so. His eyes never stray from her. He does not even pause when his boots crunch in dried leaves instead of snow.

The princess shrugs. "I do not know. I will leave when I need to. I will leave before you do, to herald your arrival, to be Hyrule's fall before your winter."

"All seasons in their turn, I suppose," he murmurs, looking off to the side in deep thought.

"Yes, I come with the autumn, you the winter, and the Hero the spring. Everything comes in cycles. The goddesses do love their patterns." She fixes her gaze on his jaw, silently willing him to look at her again. If she lets him wander too far into his own mind, it is difficult to bring him back.

He twists his head back towards her and says solemnly, "We each have our roles to play. You are the dying, and I am the death."

Her hand in his elbow tightens, and she gives him a smile. "But Hyrule is in its summer right now, and we are together. That is all that matters."

"You are right." He returns her smile, but his words are weighted like lead. He is already thinking of when she will leave again.

She plucks a red anemone hanging from a sconce nearby and stands on tiptoe to tuck it into his matching locks. "Do not brood," she orders. "It does not suit you."

His expression softens, and it seems as if light enters this dark place. "It did not always. As a mortal man, I was more suited for summer." He smirks at the irony of it.

"And when I was still flesh and blood, I always preferred winter, but sometimes we are not given a choice about who or what we are. We do have a choice though in how we accept it. Death . . ." she pauses as she searches for the right words to say, they always seem to elude her when in his presence, "it is not always a bad thing. It can bring a sort of joy in its finality, in its peace. Like you do me."

He quirks an eyebrow. "You are growing soft."

She shushes him and adjusts the flower in his hair so it doesn't fall. "I was always soft in my way. I have simply done away with pretense."

Ganondorf nods in acceptance and sets them to walking again. "Come, lets do as you say and allow Hyrule to have its summer, and us ours."

**I've been in kind of a slump lately, and just wanted to really write something down and up it out there. Not really pleased with it, but let me know what you thought.**


End file.
